The Elder Scrolls Online: Made the step
While WildStar is still searching for a solution, The Elder Scrolls Online has long found it. One can speculate about how long they have known that they would switch to a Buy2Play model. Was it clear before the release? In the summer, when they laid the foundation for today’s TESO? Or only in the last months?
TESO proactively used the material they had after April and May, when they first had to rub their eyes. They continued to develop it and worked on a redesign. We called it mid-May back then – in reference to FF XIV – “Tamriel Reborn“, which it has not quite become: “Tamriel Unlimited” is the new Buy2Play TESO that should differentiate far more from The Elder Scrolls Online in 2014 than just the payment model.
The Elder Scrolls Online simultaneously “more wowish” and “more skyrimish”
Next week, they will reintroduce themselves, and what they can show will make a significantly better impression than what they presented in April 2014. The game is rounder, “skyrimish” and at the same time a bit “more wowish”, it feels rounded and polished. The individual aspects of the game have improved without jeopardizing the charm that underlies the game.
Sounds great, but it’s also no wonder: Every MMO is better a year after release; otherwise, the employees would have failed their jobs. But TESO will have the opportunity to show how it has improved. A chance that WildStar would likely go over Chua corpses.
Now they are reintroducing themselves on PC, and then in the summer on Xbox One and Playstation 4. And those two dates will really count.
Is The Elder Scrolls Online ready for the big stage?
The downside now is: One is still not really finished. They are probably hoping to show a working provisional version. The “actually finished” TESO would have needed the next phase of the justice system (players can hunt criminals), a rounding off of the champion system, and especially the Imperial City in PvP.
But they probably couldn’t get all this done, and until these elements come, it can take a long time. That is the disadvantage of significant changes: They take an enormous amount of time during which not much else will happen.
